NWO Vidi grant for Peter Kraus
Peter Kraus has received an NWO Vidi grant, which enables him to carry out the project ‘High-harmonic metrology of ultrafast correlated electron dynamics’ (HIMALAYA). Kraus is group leader at ARCNL and assistant professor at Vrije Universiteit. A total amount of 800.000 euro has been granted.
About HIMALAYA
In HIMALAYA, Kraus will devise a new type of super-resolution microscopy and apply the technique to strongly correlated materials. Under the influence of changes in temperature, pressure or light the electrons present in these materials will start moving in what looks like a collective dance. Understanding and manipulating the properties of the material is difficult, because they emerge quickly (femtoseconds) and happen at an extremely small scale (nanometer).
The microscopy technique Kraus will develop is based on the emission of high harmonics directly from a solid – multiples of the fundamental frequency of an intense laser that irradiates a material. By quantum engineering the process of high-harmonic generation, Kraus plans on generating light from nanoscale volumes, which will allow microscopy with previously unprecedented resolution without the need of labeling – that is chemically altering – a sample. Such labeling was previously required for making nanoscale microscopy images.
